Conclavist

A conclavist was a personal aide of a cardinal present in a papal conclave. The term is sometimes used to refer to all present with a conclave, including the cardinal-electors, but is more properly applied only to the non-cardinals. Conclavists played an important historical role in the negotiations of papal elections and in the evolution of secrecy (or the lack thereof), writing many of the extant accounts of papal elections.

Three popes have been elected from former conclavists, including Pope Pius VI (a conclavist in the 1740 conclave). Other conclavists have later been elevated to the cardinalate, such as Pierre Guérin de Tencin (1721),Niccolò Coscia (1724),Christoph Anton Migazzi (1740), and Carlo Confalonieri (1922).

Pope Paul VI in effect eliminated the role of the historical conclavist by banning private aides and creating a common support staff.

The participation of the laity in the election of a pope predates the creation of the papal conclave, with different degrees of involvement characterizing papal selection before 1059. The concept of papal elections as an exclusive event dates to the use of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, which was too small to accommodate "the whole people", as the site of papal elections during the Byzantine Papacy (537-752). The modern conception of the papal election as the exclusive provenance of the College of Cardinals dates to Pope Nicholas II's 1059 bull In Nomine Domini, which limited suffrage to the cardinal-bishops.

The word conclavist comes from conclave (derived from the Latin cum clave, meaning "with a key"), which evolved during the thirteenth century, being formalized by Pope Gregory X's Ubi periculum in 1274, promulgated during the Second Council of Lyon. The procedure of locking in the papal elections was intermittently used until, and exclusively used after, 1294. The norms on the number and type of individuals that could accompany them varied from conclave to conclave until the mid fifteenth century, when the role of the conclavist "had become defined".

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